There is method behind Harley’s madness

Originally published: March 14, 2013

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“Why would anyone buy a Harley-Davidson?”

It’s a constant refrain, often querulous, from my many sport bike riding buddies, their simple skepticism hiding all manner of derogatory implications. Sometimes, it merely infers a general antipathy towards anything cruiser. At other times, it’s to convey a more brand-specific enmity. But the intimation is the same: Harleys are anachronisms compared with their latest double overhead frammich-valved road rockets. The insinuation is always that the Milwaukee iron is lesser, its customer based deluded and somehow the motorcycling world is not right for the brand’s incredible popularity.

Experts posit all manner of rationalizations for The Motor Company’s popularity from the simplistic — Harley being the last significant American motorcycle manufacturer extant — to the basic need of humans to belong. Harley-Davidson is nothing if not the world’s largest club (the recently retired Willie G. Davidson, in response to a question by Ford F-150 Harley-Davidson edition marketers as to how The Motor Company collected all its customer data, said “Oh, we just know them all by name”).

But even this two-wheeled fraternity fails to convince non-believers who always return to the refrain that since the antediluvian Harleys are less technologically advanced than their latest high-tech competitors, they must be inferior, the inference always being that Milwaukee does precious little research and development relying instead on branding and fellowship to peddle its wares. Well, as I found out this past Daytona Bike Week, it’s not that The Motor Company doesn’t have an extensive R & D program; it just chooses to research and develop different technologies than mainstream motorcycle manufacturers do.

The Custom Vehicle Operations Breakout tested elsewhere in this edition of Post Driving, for instance, has one of the most incredible paint jobs I have ever seen on a motorcycle, production or customized. It’s called Hard Candy Liquid Sun, and neither words nor pictures do its sheen justice. Saying that it sparkles like chrome and has the miles-deep translucence of multi-layer lacquer simply doesn’t do it justice. Until you’ve seen it in person, you just can’t grasp its captivation; motorheads stare at it transfixed as if it were the Mona Lisa.

So what, say you skeptics. They spent a couple of extra minutes slapping on some fancy paint. That hardly stands as an example of the massive laboratory work that speaks to the latest technologies.

Oh, but it does, Harley-Davidson says. According to Jeff Smith, Harley’s product portfolio manager, the process that allows the CVO Breakout all that bling took months to develop and requires no less than 21 steps to apply. Ten steps alone are required to grind and polish the tank’s bare metal to its chrome-like polish (the secret to that incredible underlying gleam), all of it done by hand.

All manner of proprietary chemistry had to be developed to allow H-D to administer the paint. For instance, polishing steel to a high gloss requires oodles of fine-grit compound that, if even microscopic remnants are left behind, wreaks havoc on any paint job. Speaking from personal experience, I can tell you that washing said grime away is a tricky business (I once had to repeat an entire paint job as a result of improper cleaning. Oh, the joys of sanding!) so Harley developed its own rinsing solution. And, as every painter knows, traditional paints demand rough sanded surfaces for maximum adherence; PPG had to develop a “high-tack” lacquer just so it would stick to the Breakout’s mirror-like finish.

Still not convinced? Well, shades of Honda’s HRC engine laboratories, every Harley employee who handles the CVO’s tank in the painting process has to wear virgin cotton gloves lest their hands (or used gloves!) leave paint-disrupting oils. The first coat of that high-tack lacquer has to be applied within an hour of the completion of the polishing process lest that highly polished metal start to oxidize. All told, a CVO Breakout tank takes 17 days to paint, a time in which Yamaha or Kawasaki has produced thousands of motorcycles.

So what, reiterate the cynics, fancy paint jobs, intricately processed or not, are just aesthetics and not the mechanics that are, or should be, the heart of any motorcycle. It’s a justifiable argument, awakening the ages-old squabble over the relative hierarchy of form versus function. And truth be told, I personally would like to think that I would always opt for the latter over the former.

On the other hand, Harley-Davidsons are, by far, the most popular large-displacement motorcycles in North America. They must be doing something right.